Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 RNA Persistence across Indoor Surface Materials Reveals Best Practices for Environmental Monitoring Programs
Rodolfo A. Salido, Victor J. Cantú, Alex E. Clark, Sandra L. Leibel, Anahid Foroughishafiei, Anushka Saha, Abbas Hakim, Alhakam Nouri, Alma L. Lastrella, Anelizze Castro-Martínez, Ashley Plascencia, Bhavika K. Kapadia, Bing Xia, Christopher A. Ruiz, Clarisse A. Marotz, Daniel Maunder, Elijah S. Lawrence, Elizabeth W. Smoot, Emily Eisner, Evelyn S. Crescini, Laura Kohn, Lizbeth Franco Vargas, Marisol Chacón, Maryann Betty, Michal Machnicki, Min Yi Wu, Nathan A. Baer, Pedro Belda-Ferre, Peter De Hoff, Phoebe Seaver, R. Tyler Ostrander, Rebecca Tsai, Shashank Sathe, Stefan Aigner, Sydney C. Morgan, Toan T. Ngo, Tom Barber, Willi Cheung, Aaron F. Carlin, Gene W. Yeo, Louise C. Laurent, Rebecca Fielding-Miller, Rob Knight
Abstract
Environmental monitoring is an important tool for public health surveillance, particularly in settings with low rates of diagnostic testing. Time between sampling public environments, such as hospitals or schools, and notifying stakeholders of the results should be minimal, allowing decisions to be made toward containing outbreaks of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The Safer At School Early Alert program (SASEA) (https://saseasystem.org/), a large-scale environmental monitoring effort in elementary school and child care settings, has processed >13,000 surface samples for SARS-CoV-2, detecting viral signals from 574 samples. However, consecutive detection events necessitated the present study to establish appropriate response practices around persistent viral signals on classroom surfaces. Other research groups and clinical labs developing environmental monitoring methods may need to establish their own correlation between RT-qPCR results and viral load, but this work provides evidence justifying simplified experimental designs, like reduced testing materials and the use of heat-inactivated viral particles.